Assessment Readiness Guide Available for All Best Practice Pillars

December 11, 2014

With guidance from its Best Practices Task Force, ALTA has developed Assessment Readiness Guides to help members evaluate if they are prepared to undergo an assessment to determine compliance with ALTA’s “Title Insurance and Settlement Company Best Practices.”

ALTA has released Assessment Readiness Guides for each pillar of the Best Practices. The guides are available exclusively to ALTA members.

The first section of the guides ask for basic company information, including whether your company uses any third party for services, such as title plants, search companies and notaries. The second section of the Assessment Readiness Guide is comprised of a series of questions corresponding to the Best Practices. The second section of assessment guide for the third pillar includes a portion to explain why a procedure is not applicable to an organization. This section also includes a table for a company to outline its remediation plan for any deficient areas.

Along with the questions, the guide includes suggested testing and reviews for a company to conduct to help verify whether an operation follows the Best Practices. Separate guides should be completed for each licensed entity a company owns.

In addition to the Assessment Readiness Guides, ALTA is working with lenders to develop a standard format to communicate compliance. This will be a tool ALTA members can use to respond to lender questionnaires or other inquiries.